SOC Under the Sea Cover Contest

Hobbes and Pudge came up with the idea for having a SOC Under the Sea Cover Contest. So here it is. There were no rules except for "do a cover of the Disney song 'Under the Sea,'" just an arbitrary and flexible deadline. There is no winner. Or everyone is a winner. Or something.

Entries

Pudge
The contest idea started when Hobbes shared with me a band called Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, who do nothing but punk covers of other songs. For some reason -- maybe because I'd done a morose cover of the Disney song "It's a Small World" before, and I had recently seen Thom Yorke do some stripped-down performances on TV -- I did a Yorkeish (Yorkie?) cover of "Under the Sea." It's just got an acoustic guitar, vocal, and a sweet emulated Rhodes Suitcase MkI piano. I threw some nice sampled reverb from a seashore on the vocal. I think it came out beautifully. And now there is a music video to go with it.

Hobbes
My take on this starts with the ultimate cover band, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. I instantly in my mind hear 'pop/punk' and decided to go that direction. Unfortunately, trying to play that riff at 130 bpm wasn't going to be terribly efficient, so I went with a synth sound. That actually gave it a bit of a 'happy hardcore' flavor ala Dragonforce, which was a nice addition. I decided to try and ape the accent, simply because I couldn't imagine singing it without.

Porthos
I knew I wouldn't have time to record a musical version, much less match up with some of you guys on talent. So I went for the creative/funny angle. I originally was thinking something ala William Shatner's "Has Been" stuff, but it took a darker turn. And what started as a tongue-in-cheek attempt, ended up as something I actually like. Who knew?